The Canyon of Bones Read Online Free Page A

take that Mister that prefixes your name. The story I have is that you require it. Is that the case?”
    â€œIt is, sir.”

    â€œAnd why is that?”
    â€œIn England, a man without a Mister before his name is a man beneath notice. I ask to be addressed as Mister here in North America, where a man can advance on his merits.”
    â€œA capital answer, Mister Skye. I should introduce you to my assistants, Mister Corporal, and Mister Winding. Floyd Corporal and Silas Winding. They’re teamsters and hunters from Missouri and both have guided wagon trains out to Oregon, and know the ropes.”
    Skye shook hands with both. Winding, in particular, interested him. Beneath that gray slouch hat was a pair of wary hazel eyes set in a face weathered to the color of a roasted chestnut. The man looked entirely capable of dealing with wilderness, and indeed, this pair had somehow gotten a wagon and its gold-colored horses through streams, across gulches, over boulders, up precipices, around brush and cactus and forest, to this remote Eden.
    â€œNever been called a Mister before,” Winding said.
    â€œWell, Mister Skye here has set a good precedent,” Mercer replied. “I’ll follow suit! From now on, you’re Mister Winding, if you can stand it.”
    Winding spat, pulled some tobacco from his pocket, and placed a pinch under his tongue. Then he smiled. “It don’t rightly fit but I’ll weather it,” he said.
    Around them, the Crows and Shoshones were swiftly erecting their encampment while children gathered into flocks and raced like starlings hither and yon. The Big Robber and Washakie had settled on some thick robes to enjoy a diplomatic smoke, each of them flanked by headmen and shamans.
    Skye itched to learn the nature of Mercer’s business but constrained his impulses. If the Briton wanted to talk of it, he would.

    But Mercer had a disconcerting way of plunging into the middle of things. “You’re wondering why I’m here, Mister Skye. Now, I’m quite happy to tell you. I’m an adventurer. I make my living at it. All of Europe starves for knowledge of the far corners of this great world. A man who can feed them stories about Madagascar or Timbuktu or Pitcairn Island or Antarctica is able to make a pretty penny, nay a pretty pound, by scribbling away.”
    â€œYou’re a writer, then?”
    â€œOh, you might call me that. I fancy myself a good and exact chronicler, recording the world with a steady scientific eye. But I’m really a rambler. I go where no one else has gone and write about it. I examine strange people, exotic tribes, bizarre practices, and write of them. I keep a detailed journal, a daily log, in duplicate and in weatherproof containers, in which I record everything. I explore not just the terrain, describing what has never been witnessed by white men, but also the natives. That’s why I’m here. These two tribes are unknown in Europe, and here I am to tell the readers of the London Times or the Guardian what I witness. And the darker and more fantastic, the better. But I also organize my journals into book form. What I see is not for all eyes, of course, and these volumes have an eager readership; people can’t get enough of them. I do have a bit of trouble with censors but that only increases the sales. If I didn’t have a spot of trouble, the books would hardly fly out of the stalls the way they do.”
    â€œA journalist, then,” Skye said.
    â€œAh, you might say it. But it’s the least of my vocations.”
    â€œWhat are your larger ones?”
    â€œExplorer, cartographer, ethnologist, geographer, biologist, zoologist, artist, linguist—I have several European tongues, French, Flemish, Dutch, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and a
reading knowledge of several others, and by the time I’m done here, I’ll have a few thousand words of Shoshone and Absaroka in my notes, and